Bush Delays Release of Classified Papers

DEB RIECHMANN

Published
6:00 pm CST, Monday, March 24, 2003

Associated Press Writer

President Bush issued an executive order Tuesday that will delay the release of millions of historical documents for more than three years and make it easier to reclassify information that could damage national security.

Bush signed the 25-page order three weeks before the government's April 17 deadline for the automatic declassification of millions of papers 25 years or older.

Historians and declassification experts have mixed reactions to Bush's order. Some say its provisions are less restrictive than they expected and others argue it further cloaks government activities.

Amending a less restrictive order signed by President Clinton, Bush's action gives agencies until the end of 2006 to release the documents _ a wide gamut of national security decision-making, from military records to diplomatic documents.

"Given that the Bush administration is the most secretive presidency in recent decades, this order is not as bad as it might be," said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project.

But others, like Thomas Blanton at the National Security Archive, a group that works to get government documents declassified, says it's a step back in time. He's especially upset over a provision stating that foreign government information is presumed classified. Under the Clinton order, this type of information was kept classified or declassified on a case-by-case basis.

An administration official who talked to reporters on condition of anonymity said agencies needed more time to review the thousands of documents in the latest batch set to be automatically declassified to make sure nothing is released that compromises intelligence sources and methods or disseminates details about weapons of mass destruction.

The order makes it easier for the U.S. government to reclassify sensitive information that had previously been made public. The administration official said there may be cases in which information that has already been made public needs to be retrieved and made confidential because it compromises national security.

"If it's already out there, the national security has already been compromised," said Anna K. Nelson, an American University history professor. "I think it's absurd to reclassify documents. They're out in the public. That's the whole point of having a declassification system. If you can turn around and reclassify them, what's the point."

Clinton's order stated that if there is a significant doubt about the need to declassify certain papers, they should be released. Bush's order deletes this provision.

"The Clinton order resulted in the release of nearly 1 billion pages of historically valuable documents _ all kinds of records about the Vietnam War, the history of nuclear weapons development and deployment, relations with the Soviet Union," Aftergood said. "Nobody has managed to go through all of the documents."

Aftergood said he was happy to see that Bush's order did not abolish the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, set up under Clinton's order in 1995. If an agency refuses to declassify a certain document, requesters can appeal to the panel, which has overruled agencies 76 percent of the time.

But Blanton noted a new provision in Bush's order that gives the CIA the authority to reject appeals panel decisions.

"Giving the CIA a get-out-of-jail-free card at ISCAP means the current 76 percent rate at which it rules for requesters will soon drop _ maybe not all the way to Uzbekistan's levels, but to Langley's, which are close," he said.